


hallow the sons

by gayriot



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Blood Sharing, Character Development, Daddy Issues, Dialect, Fluff and Angst, Genderfuck, Goths, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized racism, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Racism, Religion, Secret Relationship, Step-siblings, Teen Angst, church camp, church stuffs, like legit issues, lol, otherkin???
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayriot/pseuds/gayriot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dear Lord," he starts, "I know there are many children struggling in this day and age with temptation. Sometimes we feel pressured to commit sins, but please do not hold this against my son. John promises to do better in the future and learn from his mistakes, right?"</p><p>John crosses his fingers underneath the table, and prays for the food to still be warm once his dad is done spewing bullshit. "I promise, God."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be a pretty long multi chapter fic (hopefully) and ill try my best to update it (i dont live in texas pls dont yell at me for how im describing it) and im trying to write more of the other trolls but holy fuck i dont know how im gonna pull this shit off but im excited

Here, the heat prevailed. Vapors rose off the earth so often it was strange to find them missing. People fanned themselves with whatever they had whenever they had a moment to and babies cried underneath the hot sun. Cases of pets with burnt paws popped up every week because of careless owners, and some days it was just better to keep the dogs in a hot house with a weak fan than to let them run about on the steaming sidewalks. It was just too hot here.

It was different from Washington. Some citizens wore the stereotypical cowboy hats, no matter what type of weather they were having, and most of the people of Texas liked to have their opinions displayed loud and proud, just like them. People stayed up until the moon began its descent, enjoying the slightly cooler air it brought with it. John watched them from the fire escape and wrapped himself in the sounds of it all. The music blaring from the apartment across from his. The teenagers running on the sidewalk below. The people on their phones, waiting to get picked up from an event. The ones who didn't even wait and went to the back of the building to hurl everything they had to. It wasn't peaceful.

Sometimes, people would call up to him. They'd give him a smile and a wave. They'd shout obscene things his way. A holler here, a drunken-compliment-that-bordered-perverted there. John didn't mind. Texas was eventful. Frightening and loud and hot as all hell. But eventful. 

He'd stay up long enough for him to start feeling exhausted. So tired, he wouldn't have any dreams (hopefully) and just conk the hell out as soon as his crown hit the mattress. He didn't have any pillows--one, being left behind in Washington after a hurried morning of packing, the other, chucked off his fire escape and into the streets in a fit of rage. 

_Crockercorp was a multi-million-dollar company. It paid James Egbert well, allowing him to afford several different homes in locations all across the US of A. He'd stay in a simple, modern apartment in a bustling city, in an attempt to keep his son modest and grateful. He'd retreat to another home in the summer and ship his well-rounded son off to some camp one of his coworkers would recommend to him. Ms. Lalonde--gorgeous young lady, golden hair curled to such perfection that beauty gurus clicked their tongues and rolled their eyes in envy, face resembling that of a young Brigitte Bardot--would visit him wherever he went. He'd found her through Craigslist, and never ceased contact with her, even after she had apparently "turned over a new leaf." On even rarer occasions, a younger man--standing at a staggering 6"1, Brodrick Strider was a handsomely-intimidating beast, even more so underneath the sheets--would come see him. His visits were always unexpected and very scarce. James always kept a change of clothes for Bro handy, if the need ever arose._

_Then, in August when he'd return to his son, John and James would sit down together in the dining room. They'd clasp their own hands tight together, keeping them hidden in their laps, and mentally say their own prayers. James, apologizing to God for the woman he'd touched in one state and the man he'd laid with in another, and he'd pray for his son to forgive him for leaving him alone for so long. John, apologizing to his dad for skipping most of the camp he'd been sent to, only to stay at the apartment, and leaving his prayers for when he truly needed them, since God was always too busy, it seemed, to pay attention to what John wished for. The two would sit in a silence that seemed heavy with thoughts of sin for an hour or so, ending with a final spoken prayer of good wishes for the future, and then James' son would retreat to his room. James would call up his work pals, inform them of the relaxing stay he had in the mountains or on the beach, and of the wonderful time John had at camp._

_John Egbert, the year he'd turned ten, had listened to the conversation. He'd dug his own fingernails into his arms and kicked the foot of his bed hard, biting his lip when the pain coursed through his foot. He threw his stuffed salamander on the floor, stomped on it and watched the lights on his sketchers brighten up the dark bedroom with each step, and gritted his teeth. He breathed heavily through his clenched teeth and shook the glasses off his face, and then poured all his frustrations into the toss he gave the only pillow he had left. It flew out the window and collided with the brick wall of the building across form his._

_When his dad had noticed, a week later after he'd finally become fed up with John's refusal to leave his bedroom, he asked John where his pillow went. John stuck his tongue out at his father and bit it with his green-braced teeth. The next day, a new, fluffier, more expensive Power Rangers pillow showed up on his bed. He tossed that out the window too, snapped his glasses in half, and cried all over the lenses._

_A new tank with a small yellow salamander appeared on his desk the next month. A blue sticky note with a smiley face written on it was stuck to the glass. John let the salamander loose on the fire escape, despite how much he enjoyed its company, and turned the smiley face into an angry one. His father went back to one of his homes for a few days. Five years later, and he still didn't have a new pillow._

"John...."

He looked at his father, watching his eyes disappear from underneath the brim of his fedora. James glanced at the wilting potted plant sitting lonely on his son's fire escape. He sighed.

"Mary showed me a new camp today."

"Who the hell is Mary?" John spat out.

"...Language, son. Mary is from work--you know this; she comes over for dinner sometimes and we see her at church."

"Did she show you a concentration camp?

"Jonathan, that's not funny. Don't say that."

John prodded the inside of his cheek with his tongue at the sound of his full name. 

"I'll leave the pamphlet on your desk. You leave in a week. You should pack now."

As his father opened the door, his head snapped up quickly. He spoke with disbelief coating his words, "Pack? It's not a day camp?"

James ignored his son in favor of the open door. It lingered ajar as he walked down the hall.

John picked up the pamphlet in his hands. _Cherrywoods Baptist Camp--A Christian Camp & Retreat Center located on the Vantas Farm Estate serving East Texas and beyond_. A picture of a cross burned into a tree was displayed below the big green letters on the front. On the inside, a picture of a man--probably in his forties--wearing a yellow snap-back was staring up at him, his hand outstretched and palm open in a gesture that told him _yes, please come to church camp, it's so much fun_! The caption underneath labeled him as the camp pastor. John hated him already.

John listened, again, to the sounds outside the apartment. It was only noon, but the streets were buzzing with activity. The start of a new summer stirred up the kids of the town. He glanced at the picture of the pastor, then back at the streets. Who, he thought, would harbor so much hatred for their own child that they'd send them off to a camp full of gross old pastors? It was unthinkable. Normal day camps had already been enough to make him pray for school to start up again--Peace Corps, Caribbean Mountain Academy, The American Champions Camp Association...those were some of the worst. He'd rather go spend a whole year at another Peace Corps Camp, baking in the sun with a bunch of old hippies and white adults who had tried to give themselves dreads by not touching their hair for weeks, than spend two and a half months with a preaching hipster who's sense of humor had expired a decade ago. The pastors there probably wore phat pants, judging by this one picture. A black sharpie found its way into his left hand. He scribbled a pair of sunglasses onto the pastor's face and tattooed "COOL" on his forehead. He opened the glass doors to the fire escape and sent the pamphlet over the railing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DFGDSIUYFGHF HEy im sorryy its been more than a week i think :/// my computer got fucking HACKED and i spent most of my time crying, pulling my hair out, and troubleshooting and deleting programs. thank god i had saved a draft on here before it all happened, its been absolute torture not being able to use my computer for anything (btw thanks for the positive comments on the first chapter i always get excited over feedback<3)

Dave Strider thinks more than he talks. 

He takes shallow breaths, messes with his hair, taps on whatever hard surface he can find, and then, he thinks. Once he's finished his thinking process, he speaks. Sometimes. Most of the time, he goes to open his mouth but inevitably closes it, only to repeat the process. All his teachers complained and his peers compared him to a gaping fish gasping for air--or, water. The metaphor is ahead of its own time. 

The Strider family is one of many talents. The children, prodigies and geniuses and upcoming stars; the generations before them, all inventors and business owners and just well-off people in general. They made money, and they did well. They weren't a world-famous family--not everyone considered Strider a household name--but they were proud, attractive, and skilled. The defects and mutations that ran in the bloodline had no effect on their reputation--the family that you saw on the Christmas cards was, for the most part, the family that you got when you saw them face-to-face.

The Strilondes, however, could be considered an apple that fell from a diffrent tree. 

_Dave Strider's parents seemed to fail immensely at the whole parenting role. The twins, David and Derek, were conceived when Brodrick, their father, was just eighteen and their mother, going only by her surname  
Lalonde, was twenty-five. He took one look at the twin boys, both screaming and wailing their way into the world, and the next day he was gone. He'd left his car and all the money that Lalonde knew of, and no one knew where he could've run off to. No one really cared to find out. Any blood related family member that wouldn't contribute positively to the family name was no Strider. _

_Lacking a family of her own, Lalonde found solace in the Striders. The family was large and proud and intimidating, and it clashed perfectly with her personality. The family took care of the young twins in their infancy, and soon the woman was once again pregnant. She gave birth in the empty Walmart parking lot after closing hours with the help of one James Egbert, the manager of said establishment, who'd stayed late to lock and re-lock everything after a scare down the street with some amateur robbers. James drove her to the hospital once it was safe and left as soon as she entered. Something about taking care of his own child, but Lalonde didn't really hear him; giving birth to a living thing on an oh-so-comfortable asphalt ground can do a number on your...everything._

_The unexpected miracle was named Rosalie, and no Strider questioned why the energetic and eccentric woman acted so distant around her children._

_Years later, when the twins were five and Rose had just turned four, a man showed up at the Strider household. His blond hair sagged under the weight of heavy raindrops and dripped onto the lenses of his sunglasses. He held a cane in one hand and a suitcase in the other. When Lalonde opened the door, he asked to see Derek and David Strider. In a drunken stupor, she scooped up the young children in her arms and presented them to him. He tucked the cane under the arm that held the suitcase, collected the two children with his now free arm, and slowly dragged himself to the grey car sitting in the driveway. She giggled, waved goodbye at the stranger, and then closed the door to sit with Rose on the couch. Rain pounded on the windows and encased the house in a veil of silence. Rose watched the water drip down the glass of the window behind the couch, and the car with her brothers drove away._

_Lalonde moved out of the house in Texas a month later. She stopped considering her and her daughter Striders._

Dave Strider is not one of the talented Strider relatives. He hears the remarks made about him after he leaves the dinner table; his family is by no means snobby, but high expectations are to be expected and met. They called him a Strilonde once, and although he has no clue of what the word means, he knew it was treated as a word only for adult ears. Strilonde, to him, means a useless relative, a son who can't do anything for his family, and that's just what he is. And maybe that's the reason why his wonderful father, if he can even call him that, has decided that the best way to discipline his son is to send him off to a camp.

The church camp is owned by Dave and Dirk's friend's family. Karkat described his foster family as "excruciatingly religious and about as uptight as Donald Trump's asshole." They were signed up to the camp for no charge, as long as Dirk promoted it at one of his fencing tournaments, and the thought of getting rid of his sons for a whole summer for free was absolute bliss to their father. 

Dave turns the balled up pamphlet in his hand, the paper worn and soft, and hurls it at his brother's sleeping form. He doesn't budge when it comes into contact with his nose. Dave sighs and slumps against the wall behind his bed.

He thinks again. About the plaid pattern of his blanket, the small snores emitting from Dirk's throat, the fan that only manages to push hot air Dave's way as he sits in his bed, sweating out every bodily fluid he can. The summer looms drearily ahead of him, staring him down in the face with only promises of gross cabins and DIY crucifixes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the striders call them (them being dave, dirk, bro, rose, and mom lalonde) strilondes because none of them consider them either 100% strider or lalonde and its a dumb name but its all i got :p (also i cant promise how long or short every chapter will be and for that i apologize)
> 
> (5/21/16 edit from my phone: my computer literally blue screened tonight and idk when ill be able to get back on the site from my pc :(( I have no other way of updating any stories, if any of u are good with computers please let me know. im honestly at my wits end, not even my phone is working properly 100% of the time)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow an update on a multi chapter fic???from yours truly???motherfucking hell what the fuck hello  
> also i probably changed the verb tense in this chapter accidentally but i cant bring myself to fix it oops

There's a specific sound that a fan makes when a deflating party balloon gets caught in its blades.

It's loud and obnoxious, and then the whirring of the fan just stops all together, as would be expected. John couldn't bring himself to remove the balloon that he'd picked up off the street from his dusty, old fan. It was wrinkled and almost completely void of helium. The fan didn't seem to be in any danger of breaking, and even if it was, he doubted that he'd actually make himself get up off his bed to go fix it. The purple latex seemed to have been ripped from the blades. John sighed and got up from his bed to remove the now dead balloon. It fell limp in his hands, and he tossed it over the fire escape railing and it sailed into the streets. Does this count as littering? Probably. No one saw it, though; he can't be held accountable for the destruction of the Earth all because some knucklehead threw a latex balloon onto the ground. 

Another copy of the pamphlet he'd thrown away sat on his blanket menacingly. The idea of attending a bible camp was ridiculous--if his father cared so much about his son being Christian, why had he never taken the time to just bring him to church more often or simply set a bible out in plain sight? It wasn't even about the fact that John had nowhere else to go for the summer. No, it wasn't the typical summer where his dad sent him somewhere to get his son out of his hair, and if he learns something while there it's just a byproduct; it felt like a summer where James Egbert's friends had convinced him that maybe, just maybe, his son wasn't religious enough. The idea of him learning something at his temporary summer home was no longer a byproduct; it was evident that that was the main objective. Let some random Christian strangers take care of John, and let them fill his head with tales of God and turning bread into fish (or whatever it was) in the process. 

During holiday breaks, the Egberts would retreat to one of their bigger, fancier houses, because everything had to live up to other people's expectations in this family. Dad's work friends would come over for dinner, usually when he wanted to convince them to put in a good word for him when interviewers would ask about the company. Some of them dressed stereotypical preppy, and John didn't even know that people could actually be so true to the movies he'd seen with so-called "preps". It was laughable. More often than not, he was excluded or even kicked out of the dining room because he never dressed to uphold the appearance his father had set for him. Usually, his coworkers were less than impressed to see the famous James Egbert's son dressed in skinny jeans or sweatpants with a hoodie or a slimer t-shirt. 

_They're from Maryland, which is three hours away from the Egberts' Pennsylvania home, and yet they still turned up for a chance to have dinner with the mother's millionaire boss. It wasn't worth it in John's opinion. None of it was--hiring a caterer for dinner, even though James could cook excellently, all because some strangers' opinions would matter more than anything, bribing them with promises of promotions and bonuses if they praised the company in an interview. It was fake and empty. Despite the halls that were lined with paintings and vases of flowers and rooms filled with expensive furniture, John thought that the house itself was empty._

_There's just something so...liberating, John thought, about mortifying his father and breaking apart his perfect image when guests arrive. The Egbert son--the black sheep of the family. He talked with his mouth full at dinner, spit out on to his plate the fatty pieces of his steak in front of everyone, wiped his hands on his pants, whatever he thought would make his father burn with shame in front of other people. He didn't get to do this often; if his father saw what he was wearing before the guests arrived, which he almost always did, he'd send him to his room and lock the door with the only key in the house. John still wasn't sure of how to acquire a copy._

_The family from Maryland shows up ten minutes later than the time they were requested to arrive, and James doesn't show any sliver of annoyance when they arrive as he's still dusting a picture fame. No one has informed him of his son's attire as he's sneaked out the backdoor to escort the family. John is dressed in his best pajama pants--the pockets on these are still intact--and a grey hoodie with an ink stain on the pocket. He's barefoot, and he makes a mental note to himself to wipe the dirt on his feet off on his dad's coat._

_When he reaches the family's car, the first thing he notices is that it's loud. The mom is in the front seat and looking into her phone camera as she fixes her lipstick. There's a woman next to her--John pegs her as the aunt--who is urging her to hurry up. She's brushing her curly amber hair with her fingers, cursing every time her ring catches. A teenage girl is leaning on the trunk of the car, chubby fingers running across the braid her hair is in. She shouts out a complaint about being "dragged to Veruca's house" and John doesn't understand what it means, but it feels like an insult to the house, so he smiles. Two small boys are playing together; one is laughing and is curled up underneath the car, dirtying his khaki pants and polo shirt, the other, looking exactly like the one hiding, right down to the clothes and haircut, is running around and yelling at him to come out._

_John knocks on the passenger seat window and the lady with curly hair jumps and bangs her head. She rolls down her window, smiling sheepishly at John as he introduces himself. Everyone follows him to the front door where James anxiously watches as his son disobeys his wishes and tarnishes the family name with a grin on his face. They exchange pleasantries when they enter the house, and then James is sending his son upstairs to his room. The woman with curly hair asks if John could instead join them, since he was so polite outside. Before he can tell his son to change into more appropriate clothing, he's already whisking away to the dinner table and sitting in his father's usual seat._

_The aunt tells James that she's actually the wife of the other lady who has barely spoken the whole time, and laughs when John unwittingly blurts out what he originally thought she was. James grits his teeth the whole dinner. The daughter, who seats herself next to John, rubs her foot against his ankle after the encounter and for the rest of the following dinner. He wonders if all girls from Maryland are this friendly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly i have no idea when im going to update anything because if i give myself a writing schedule i'll never write good shit i hate deadlines
> 
> disclaimer: i know nothing about god or Jesus and all that jazz but i dont think Christianity is stupid and that people who follow it are stupid, john's views on region are not my own and are purely for the plot of the story


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a double update because ive avoided updating for way too long and i wanna get this show on the road. this is a memory of john's childhood; i'd like to do more chapters that are very memory focused because i intend for a lot of character development to go down!! 
> 
> (also, this is unrelated, but my school finally gave out schedules and im pissed bc i cant log on to the home access center to see my schedule and im really hoping for photography or Spanish 3 so cross your fingers)
> 
> so i always like to exlain some of my more emotional works if i feel like it so this is based off of a few times of when i told people im puerto rican (if you havent figured it out there is a racism warning for this chapter bc my john is puerto rican in this)

_What he'll remember the most is the look in their eyes, grey and determined and hardening ever more when he came to meet them. The smiles that cracked their faces, that were undeniably too wide, even for ten year olds who might've just been excited to finally be in gym class where they could run and throw things at each other and then halfheartedly apologize later on when someone got hurt. Their knuckles were bruised from the hard floor with sounds of screeching sneakers and laughter and basketballs hitting the ground trapped in the marks, and John wondered why he wasn't as good at the game as they were. He'll remember what the gym floor felt like underneath him as he sat out of the game and how close the ball came to his face every now and then and the laughter that echoed from bruised and dirtied fifth graders._

_They think it's weird, they think he's weird, because people should stay with their own kind, you couldn't be two things, it was either white or not. His olive skin that got darker faster than theirs looked dirty to them because he got too dark during the summer. The fading signs of the summer sun were still lingering on his skin, his elbows were darker than they had been two months ago and the lines on his wrist from the bracelets he had worn all summer were finally sinking back in with the rest of him as everything took it's final breath, and the liberation of a hot day and no school slipped from him again. And he remembers that it was freedom for them, or a right of passage, one or the either, because they egged each other on one by one._

_They whispered the word "spic" to each other and John was confused because his dad is white, so he's white. He's a white person who just tans easier than others. He doesn't know a lick of the language or whatever it is that they eat and he doesn't care to know because if being that will get him nowhere, then he won't be that;_ those _people, "goddamn Hispanics," he'll say his ethnicity, but those aren't his people. They ask him to say something in Spanish, say a Spanish curse word, how do you say sex in Spanish, do you talk about other people in Spanish, what's the food like, and he doesn't know, so he recites word for word some spic joke he heard on the TV or in the grocery store because it gets people laughing and that's better than the blank stare he receives when he says "I don't know."_

_John can remember that his Spanish was just a comedy act, an audience of fifth graders crowding around him and whispering to him if he could say fuck in Spanish, sombreros and ponchos because although it may not be inherently Puerto Rican, it's Spanish, and that's basically the same thing, "Your mom is Spanish, right? I bet she's hot," wondering why everyone is so surprised that his name is just John._

_When he turns thirteen, he'll ultimately remember how hard it was to talk about the_ other _part of his bloodline when he was cracking jokes about it two years ago. The Spanish class at school is so, so difficult, he can't seem to grasp anything because he's too busy trying to convince himself that it was okay to be sitting here with the people who still remember the rumors about "that spic guy who makes fun of other spics." The teacher asks him what he wants his Spanish name to be, everyone has to pick one, she laughs when he asks if he could just stay as John and then writes down a different name._

 _The only things he remembers about being being fourteen are the fights that were caused by him defending his name instead of degrading it, scratches down his neck and chest because now he_ knows _how to make fun of those assholes in Spanish, the blood staining his teeth and the white collar of his polo shirt, and the calls that were made home for such unacceptable behavior at a private school. They know where he lives, homeschooling can't help him hide from sneers and sabotaged homework and thumbs that threaten to press down on his eyes when he glances at them for a second too long. The textbook that gets thrown at him is only a joke and he should listen to the teacher that came into the bathroom where he hid to calm himself. He should listen to him, other eighth graders are stupid and ugly and they get sunburnt too easily._

Texas is so, so hot. Sometimes, John forgets just how hot it really is until he steps outside and the hands of eastern Texas in the summer bitch slap him. Gravel crunches under his Crocs-clad feet ("Dad, theses things are hideous monstrosities.") and the huge log cabin standing proudly before him seems to simmer in the daylight. This place might as well have been the world's largest campfire. He looks at his dad with pleading eyes, and James pointedly ignores his son as the cheerful counselor sitting at the folding table near the entrance waves them over with a grin on her face. Her lavender tank top only just barely brushes her hips and her black cargo shorts almost fall off of her small frame when she stands up to greet them. 

"Hi there, welcome to Cherrywoods! My name is Laura, I'm the daughter of the camp director, Mark. You must be James Egbert, correct? I recognize your face from so many articles about you on the internet, it's crazy! It's great to meet you, how are you doin'?"

James looks taken aback by the bluntness of her speech, but then straightens his posture and fixes a small smile for her.

"Ah, yes, that's me. Great to meet you, Laura, I'm fine, thank you. This is my son, John."

He claps a hand on to his son's back, who winces and glares daggers at him for a moment before returning his attention to Laura. She's smiling as she flips through the papers on her clipboard, uttering a quiet "Aha!" when she reaches John's name. She checks off the box next to his name, and from his angle he can see the quick little smiley face she adds next to it. Then, she attaches the pen to the neckline of her top with a sigh, hands raising up to lift her hair up off her neck. 

"John, you can go head inside and another counselor will take care of you. Mr. Egbert, you can go with him if you'd like, or you can leave, it don't really matter much--although I'm sure everyone would just _love_ to meet you, I know you're pro'ly busy, busy, busy! John's in good hands!"

James forces his smile to grow and chuckles somewhat awkwardly. "I should be heading out; I have no doubt that Jonathan will have a wonderful time here. Thank you for your help, Laura."

She giggles and puts on an even brighter smile, leaning forward slightly, and it becomes more and more evident that she's flirting with him. "No problem, just doin' my job! Have a great day, Mr. E."

James shakes her hand once before turning around to retreat to his car. He let's out a shaky breath once he's finally away from her and then finally, he drives off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise that john and dave are gonna meet soon!!!!!

**Author's Note:**

> if i dont update this within the next week feel free to yell at me in the comments if yall feel like it  
> john is so angsty in this geeze


End file.
